The multimedia has been evolved from audio and planar images to 3D (3 dimensional) images. As a 3D image makes us feel as if we were right in the scene, it has very high potential in communication, multimedia entertainment, etc.
At present, if one intends to have a 3D image of an object, he has to take pictures of the object from different view angles. Capturing the images of different view angles may be realized via a single-lens device or a double-lens device.
Refer to FIG. 1 for a conventional double-lens 3D camera. Simulating two eyes of human being, the conventional double-lens 3D camera has two lens assemblies 1 horizontally arranged and captures the images of an object via the two lens assemblies 1. However, the volume and weight of the lens assemblies of the double-lens 3D camera doubles that of a single-lens camera. Therefore, the conventional double-lens 3D camera is less competent in price and portability.
Refer to FIG. 2 for a conventional single-lens camera. To achieve a 3D image with a single-lens camera 2, one has to move the single-lens camera 2 horizontally to respectively take two pictures of an identical object at two different positions. However, such a method has to control the horizontal movement of the single-lens camera precisely so that the captured images can have a minimum parallactic error and achieve an optimized 3D effect. Refer to FIG. 3. Alternatively, a prism 4 is arranged in front of a lens 3 of a single-lens camera. Via the refraction of the prism 4, the single-lens camera can form two images having parallax of an identical object on a single photograph in a single shot, whereby a 3D image can be constructed.
However, the additional prism makes the single-lens camera have a massive volume and is hard to adapt to a miniaturized image capture device. Besides, the prism requires high precision, which causes a high price and impairs the application to various image capture devices.